this post was submitted on 27 Jan 2026
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Putting Kim Jong Un in front like that is silly, North Korea holds such a small amount of power it's ridiculous.
Absolutely absurd to think North Korea is a bigger threat than china and russia combined.
I assume that the percentages refer to the number of respondents that have voted for that world leader as the biggest threat, so these numbers don’t tell anything about the relative perceived threat amongst them. The only thing you can conclude is that more people ranked Kim Jong Un the highest than Jinping or Putin.
This was in 2019 and if my memory serves me right, Kim Jong Un had been testing an intercontinental missile around that time and was threatening the world with nuclear weapons much more than usual. Putin had already annexed regions in Ukraine, but apparently more people found Kim Jong Un to be the highest threat to world peace with how things were developing back then. The full scale invasion started a few years later.
In 2018 China seemed only a threat to Taiwan and Russia seemed only a threat to Georgia. But yeah, still crazy numbers. The really absurd thing is that there is not a single pandemic virus in the list.
I think a big part is NK postures like a threat, but often only meddles in its own affairs in the grand scheme of things. Russia is actively waging a war against Ukraine and China has been provoking trade wars and digital spying/manipulatation.
I also think NK size and posturing actually makes the world more ready to deal with them than the other 2 countries. NK is a much smaller nation to monitor than russia or china and since it pretty much only plays hostile, everyone is already a little on edge with them whereas both russia and china want to play by the rules most of the time but can be risky to trust.
However I'm just a guy on the internet and I certainly have a flawed view of these countries and the whole geopolitical situation so maybe NK actually deserves 30% in reality.
I think if they had polled experts instead of regular people the result would have been closer to your expectations. I wonder how much desinformation plays a role in these numbers, since China and Russia put much more effort in influencing foreign individuals. They are certainly more able to be a threat to world peace, both now and in 2018.
the us has been provoking those trade wars.
Pandemic viruses aren't world leaders, to be fair.
RFK jr?
Sentient brain worm controlling it's host Ratatouille style, totally different thing.
No obviously, also weren't a direct threat to world peace either. Kind of meant to say, what the hell did we know about the situation in 2026 8 years ago.
chinas threat is likely more economical(belt road initiatives, buying thier manufactering) as they have been doing for decades. also china has been gutting SIBERIA for a while for natural resources.
Thats because polls like these arent based on actual knowledge by people. Its more based on "oh I heard that guys bad, guess Ill vote him".
I think it mostly stems from people thinking that North Korea would actually be crazy enough to launch nukes.
KIm is like spicy pekingnese that the ccp owns when they need to distract the west.